Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Andy Schmitt and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE HEAVENLY TWINS BY MADAME SARAH GRAND AUTHOR OF "IDEALA," ETC. ETC. "They call us the Heavenly Twins." "What, signs of the Zodiac?" said the Tenor. "No; signs of the times," said the Boy. The time is racked with birth-pangs; every hour Brings forth some gasping truth, and truth new-born Looks a misshapen and untimely growth, The terror of the household and its shame, A monster coiling in its nurse's lap That some would strangle, some would starve; But still it breathes, and passed from hand to hand, And suckled at a hundred half-clad breasts Comes slowly to its stature and its form, Calms the rough ridges of its dragon scales, Changes to shining locks its snaky hair, And moves transfigured into Angel guise, Welcomed by all that cursed its hour of birth, And folded in the same encircling arms That cast it like a serpent from their hold! --_Oliver Wendell Holmes_. PROEM. _Mendelssohn's "Elijah."_ [Illustration: (musical notation); lyrics: He, watch-ing o-ver Is--ra--el, slumbers not, nor sleeps.] From the high Cathedral tower the solemn assurance floated forth to be a warning, or a promise, according to the mental state of those whose ears it filled; and the mind, familiar with the phrase, continued it involuntarily, carrying the running accompaniment, as well as the words and the melody, on to the end. After the last reverberation of the last stroke of every hour had died away, and just when expectation had been succeeded by the sense of silence, they rang it out by day and night--the bells--and the four winds of heaven by day and night spread it abroad over the great wicked city, and over the fair flat country, by many a tiny township and peaceful farmstead and scattered hamlet, on, on, it was said, to the sea--to the sea, which was twenty miles away!